Jan Brunvand’s Works on Urban Legends, “The Vanishing Hitchhiker” and “The Baby Train”: Development of Changes in Format and Presentation
Number of pages:
5
ABSTRACT:
This is a 5 page paper discussing the differences found in Brunvand’s “The Vanishing Hitchhiker” and “The Baby Train”. Jan Brunvand’s text “The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings” (1981) introduced a generation to contemporary American urban legends, their origins, their development, and contained detailed accounts as to the depth of research in understanding the legends. Twelve years later, Brunvand released his fifth volume of urban legends entitled “The Baby Train and Other Lusty Urban Legends” (1993). The format of his presentation in this volume changed somewhat to include shorter narratives and less accompanying explanatory statements about each legend. Instead, Brunvand focused much more on the typing and cross-referencing of the legends contained and on the international contexts many have reached. The reason for this change in format was mostly due to the fact that the field and the interest in urban legends had grown a great deal since his original text and because of this Brunvand was able to contain less explanatory text in regards to the research involved and thus avoid repeating himself and offering instead his readers a chance to see the extent of the field and the extent to which the knowledge of urban legends has reached on an international basis as well as an American one.
Bibliography lists 3 sources.
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File: D0_TJBrunv1.rtf
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